Oúnjẹ Ọmọ

 Oúnjẹ Ọmọ - the child’s provisioning

Before the rise of the welfare state, the first and strongest safety net for older people was their children and kin. Across continents and centuries, the logic was reciprocal and unmistakable: parents pour their strength into children; in old age, the stream should flow back.

Among the Yoruba, this pattern is not merely practical; it is ethical and beautifully phrased. The proverb says:

“Bí òkété bá dàgbà, ọmú ọmọ rẹ̀ ní ń mu” 

“When the giant rat becomes old, it suckles at its child’s breast”. 

The image is tender and firm at once. It names the rightful reversal of flows in the human life cycle: strength and sustenance run from parent to child in the morning of life and from child to parent in the evening. 

It is not a concession of pity but a recognition of justice. Children are morally obligated to cater for their parents, not only with money, but with presence, respect, and the small, visible acts that convert support into dignity.

This ethic has a name in Yoruba practice: Oúnjẹ Ọmọ - the child’s provisioning. It means children supporting their parents financially and affectionately when the parents are old and feeble. 

The material side is plain: regular remittances, food delivered or paid for, clinic fees settled, a leaking roof repaired, fuel bought for the small generator etc. 

The relational side is just as important: visits that keep elders socially present, calls that ask not only “How are you?” but “What do you actually need?”, seating elders where they can be seen and honoured at ceremonies, smoothing the little frictions of compound life so nothing gnaws at their peace. 

Oúnjẹ Ọmọ is the public proof of a private virtue. A child may be successful in Lagos or London; but if support does not flow home, neighbours do not simply say the child is busy, they question the child’s character, ìwà.

Traditionally, Yoruba compounds organised this duty with a clear sense of order. Firstborns and the most financially stable coordinated siblings: who covers monthly stipends, who handles medical appointments, who pays for festival clothes or arranges transport to family events.

In-laws and cousins joined the web of care, especially in illness or widowhood. Cooperative savings groups (Esúsú and Àjọ), neighbourhood unions operated as community backstops when shocks arrived. 

The wider world moved along similar rails. Where family resources thinned, because of death, migration, drought, or sheer poverty, local institutions stepped in. Almshouses and parish relief in Europe, guild stipends, village granaries and work parties in Africa and Asia, temple and mosque charities in the Middle East and South Asia.

These were modest buffers rather than full protections, but they mattered. And everywhere, elders worked as long as they could, lighter farm tasks, craft repair, watch duties, childcare, storytelling, then leaned, appropriately, on their children.

Industrialisation, urbanisation and migration tested these arrangements. Young adults left villages for factory towns and ports; housing shrank from compounds to tenements; kin networks stretched over railways and oceans. Elder poverty became more visible, and social pressure alone could not always hold families together across distance. 

These strains helped give birth to state pensions and social insurance in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet even in countries with generous welfare states, Yoruba wisdom would say the intimate duties remain intimate. A government can fund a clinic; it cannot replace the warmth of a child’s steady attention.

That is why the proverb’s image still governs the heart. Elder care among the Yoruba is braided into deeper virtues: ìbá (reverence), the salute that recognises elders as bearers of communal memory; ọmọlúàbí (good character), the conduct that proves proper upbringing; and reciprocity, the simple refusal to eat and forget the hands that taught one how to eat. 

The moral claim is not naïve. Some parents failed their children; some children struggle to make ends meet. The answer is not perfection but faithfulness: organise siblings so the burden is shared; give what you can consistently; keep elders visible so that help arrives before crisis.

Read this way, Oúnjẹ Ọmọ is more than remittance; it is rhythm. Money moves, but so do greetings, visits, errands, laughter and the quiet logistics of care. A son abroad wires funds and also calls on Sunday. A daughter nearby pays the clinic bill and also sits through the long morning of storytelling. A nephew handles the roof. 

The family WhatsApp is a modern version of the courtyard meeting, where duty is assigned and remembered. These are the ordinary seams of dignity.

Across the world, you can hear the same conviction in different accents: Confucian maxims in Beijing, biblical commands in Jerusalem, dharmic duties in Benares, clan law on the savannah. The Yoruba saying gives it an unforgettable shape. When the giant rat becomes old, the milk flows from the child. 

Before welfare states, that was how societies prevented the unraveling of old age. After welfare states, it is how families keep the evening of life from becoming lonely. And in the precise language of Yoruba ethics, it remains a moral obligation: children must cater for their parents, materially and affectionately, so that age is not merely endured but honoured. 

Oúnjẹ Ọmọ names the work; the proverb supplies the compass; character carries it through.

Ire o.

Olobe Yoyon edited